House map creates multimember districts

ATLANTA -- Almost one-third of Georgia House members would be serving in multimember districts following next year's elections under a plan unveiled Monday by majority Democrats.

The state House of Representatives map would create 24 multimember districts containing two, three and -- in one case -- four seats. It would affect 58 of the 180 House seats in all corners of the state, from the northwest Georgia mountains to the swamps of southeast Georgia.

An all-Democrat subcommittee voted unanimously to send the plan to the House redistricting committee, which will take it up today. A vote on the floor of the House is expected Wednesday.

Among the changes locally, a new 71st District welds eastern Athens-Clarke County with northern Oconee County and western Madison County, home territory of two Republican incumbents -- Ralph Hudgens of Hull and Bob Smith of Watkinsville.

Southern and western Athens-Clarke would move into the 72nd District, and northern and central Athens-Clarke would go into the 73rd District.

Besides the 71st, Madison County would share districts 23 and 74 with other counties. Southern Oconee County would join a district that includes parts of Walton and Morgan counties, and Barrow and Jackson counties would share districts 24 and 25 -- with a slice of the 25th District burrowing west to take in Winder.

The General Assembly redraws legislative district lines every 10 years to reflect changes in population patterns that turn up in the census.

The Senate map, which passed last week without a single Republican vote, seeks to increase that body's Democratic majority by pitting GOP incumbents against each other and by packing Republican voters into oddly shaped districts, reducing the party's strength elsewhere.

While Democratic leaders pitched the proposed House multimember districts as a way to keep from splitting counties, Republican leaders argued that partisanship also is behind the new House map. Once again, GOP leaders blamed Gov. Roy Barnes for orchestrating the plan.

With their larger populations, many of the proposed multimember districts would saddle GOP incumbents currently in safe seats with more Democratic-leaning voters. In other instances, they increase the number of Democratic supporters in Democrat-held districts that are trending Republican.

''I think the governor sent down an order ... for 120 to 130 Democratic districts with a 54 percent Democratic rating,'' said House Republican leader Lynn Westmoreland, R-Sharpsburg. ''The only way they could do that was with multimember districts.''

But Rep. Curtis Jenkins, D-Forsyth, the subcommittee's chairman, noted that the multimember districts would allow the House map to split only 79 counties, up from the current 63, despite Georgia's huge population growth during the 1990s.

Rep. Hinson Mosley, who would split a multimember district in Southeast Georgia with Rep. Tommy Smith, D-Nicholls, said rural counties need the additional clout they would get by having more than one representative.

''We can't compete with the metro areas,'' said Mosley, D-Jesup. ''But every time we go in for a project, instead of having one person, we'll have two.''

Westmoreland also criticized the plan for ignoring opportunities to create more majority-black House districts. While several maps offered by Republicans would increase the number of districts with black majorities, the Democrats opted to maintain the number at the current 40.

Black Democrats haven't been willing to join Republicans in pushing for more black districts, citing Georgia's experience at the congressional level 10 years ago. The creation of three majority-black districts in 1991 led to the election of eight Republican congressmen in surrounding districts that had been stripped of black voters.

Jenkins said Democratic leaders formed as many majority-black districts as they could while still staying within legal requirements to keep districts nearly equal in population and to draw lines that aren't based solely on racial considerations.

''That was a small miracle. Some of those districts had dropped in population dramatically,'' he said. ''(And) the courts have ruled you can't draw maps based on the maximization of race.''

While the foremost Republican complaint was multimember districts, some GOP House incumbents also found themselves targeted in the more traditional way of being placed in a single-member district with another incumbent -- such as Hudgens and Smith in the Athens area.

If Augusta Rep. Sue Burmeister wants to win a second term, she would have to run in a district now served by Democratic Rep. Ben Allen, also of Augusta. The new House plan is similar to a map Allen proposed last month.

''I knew it was coming, but it's nonetheless frustrating,'' Burmeister said Monday afternoon.

Westmoreland predicted minority Republicans won't likely get any help from the Democrats when the plan reaches the House floor.

He noted that Rep. Ann Purcell, D-Rincon, was unhappy enough with the Democratic plan Monday to try to amend it in the subcommittee. But when she was shot down without even getting a second to her motion, she voted for the map anyway.

''They're not going to like it, but they're going to follow their leadership in lockstep and do it,'' Westmoreland said.

This article published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Tuesday, August 14, 2001.